Last in the Rat Race

Often, through a weird twist of fate (or lack of creativity on my part), I’ll end up dressing Kate for school in a manner similar to my own. It’s early, I have a hard enough time picking out my own clothes… so by the time I need to wrestle her out of her pjs, hm. We’re wearing the same colors or perhaps we’re both in skirts and long-sleeved T’s. I don’t know why it happens. I find it a tad embarrassing but it takes too much effort some mornings to thwart the instinct.

This morning, however, was different. By the time I had brushed her hair and stuck a bow in for color, I realized we didn’t look a thing alike. Fantastic. She looks cute and original.

Grab her backpack, shout out instructions for a stuffed toy selection for nap time, and turn to see who’s coming to school with her. Shadow the Horse? Nope. It’s the dalmatian dog that came with her vet tools.

Holy shit. I haven’t dressed my kid like me – I dressed her like her stuffed toy!! Right down to the red accent – her hair bow and the dog’s collar.

(If that weren’t enough, I had to laugh about it and TELL her that she matched her dog. She was THRILLED. So much so, that she proceeded to tell everyone we saw that morning – the greeter at school, her friends, her friends’ parents, her teacher – that she “matched her dalmatian dog. SEE??” If everything we do reflects on our kids, Kate’s screwed.)

Last night was one of those nights.

I should have picked up on the cue from Miss Denise when I picked Kate up from school. (She’s the Heavy at nap time.)

“It was kind of a hard day,” she says, not making long eye contact.

Hm. Ok. Noted. (but not really envisioning consequences other than an early bedtime for the kid)

Dinner came and went and bath time reared its ugly head. Kate didn’t want to bathe and expressed herself quite clearly. Loudly. Racking my brain for the tips from my handy new book, I coaxed her into bath mode. It took 5 minutes. Would have been MUCH quicker to pick her ass up and haul her off to the bathroom…

Bath, bed, and all seems well.

Ha.

Around 12:30, we get a visitor. Aware that this has happened too often recently, I snap into intercept mode, making promises of back rubs as I shoo her back to her room. She climbs back in bed, boo-hoos a bit, and generally can’t settle down. I rub her back. Boy do I rub. I rub her forehead. I rub her belly. Back, head, belly. Back head belly. Backheadbelly. She’s still crying – this time her ear hurts. The tip. (how does THAT happen?) Her belly hurts. Crap. As I’m rubbing, an ominous chant begins to form in my head – H1N1, H1N1, H1N1, H1N1, H1N1, H1N1, H1N1, H1N1…

Fifteen minutes later I crumble like bad Jenga and let her back into the big bed.

She still can’t settle. More back, head, belly. By now, I’m propping up the rubbing arm with my other hand, watching as my early morning workout plans flush down the john. Back head belly. Backheadbelly.

It’s 1:30 and we’re still awake – one in tears and another close to it. She actually offers to go back to her room. (WHAT?!) I get her settled back in her bed and one minute later:

POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP.

The fart heard ’round the world with blessed sleep close on its heels.

As mentioned before, went recently spent a week in the Texas Hill Country, hanging with Mike’s mom as she recovers from hijacking one of her son’s kidneys. While she was making steady improvement, we spent 90% of our time at her house, venturing out only for some supplies, hospital appointments, and a round of golf (can’t expect the boy to give THAT up for a week!).

The cool thing about Gammi’s house is the deck off her living room. We hung our in the living room, Kate set up shop on the deck, and families of deer made periodic passes by the backyard, grazing and begging for food.

For Kate, it beat tv hands down. She would make up fantastical stories about the deer she saw and would narrate their adventures as they strolled by. For those odd times when the deer were MIA, she made up for the lack of entertainment by chatting with (shouting out to) folks walking on the road, some with dogs, and chatting up the occasional repairman who made the mistake of parking within eye/ear shot of our shy little girl. While she was contained on the deck, we still had to check on her once in a while to see who she was hollering at.

And I mean HOLLERING.

Gammi kept laughing, “It’s just what my neighbors need. Gotta wake the place up a bit!”

(good thing many are losing their hearing)

Interestingly enough, the one toy Kate can’t go to school without is her stuffed horse “Shadow”. While we were packing for this trip, I asked her repeatedly to get Shadow and stick him in her backpack. Not only did she not do it, she expressly told me that he was to stay home. Hm… Ok, kiddo, your call. Upon arriving at Gammi’s house, Kate got acquainted with all of the cool kids’ toys Gam keeps on hand for just these occasions. Kate latched on to a stuffed Giraffe and picked up another at the toy store on one of our trips out. Fascinated with the giraffes, Kate insisted to snapping some action pics herself.

Giraffe In Still Life, by Kate Annis.

Here’s a parting shot of Gam and her gal.

Last week, we spent Saturday to Saturday in the Texas Hill Country with Mike’s mom as she continues to recover from a kidney transplant.

Flights to and from were blessedly uneventful, thanks in large part to Kate’s preoccupation with her “stuff”. (sorry for the fuzzy image) What you can see in this photo is the beautiful combination of iPod (Wall-e, Mickey and Einsteins enabled) and toys.

What you can’t see from this angle is the careful placement of her audience.

Check this.

Do you think there’s a touch of OCD or is it just an attentive audience?

In our recent farm deliveries, we’ve been seeing more and more fall and winter (read: root) vegetables. While I just don’t have the energy right now to figure out what in the hell I’m going to do with five softball sized turnips, I did have an idea for the butternut squash.

SOUP!

MRA is often overheard bellyaching about me not making soup. You want soup? You got it buster.

I hopped online and quickly found a recipe that even I could handle. Actually, it seemed a little too simple… Surely I could do a little better than Betty Crocker. (oh, you silly little girl… that’s right. hop on that high cookin’ horse and let’s see if you can hold on…)

The next search result was a Michael Chiarello recipe. I remember him vividly from my maternity leave days spent lounging in front of the Food Network, eating bon bons, watching other people work, and being massaged by Hans. Oh those were the days…

With the music of a screaming newborn lilting through the room, I would day dream of living a stupidly sophisticated life in Napa, sipping wine in the afternoon with Chiarello, together cooking for our fabulous dinner guests.

Back to the issue at hand. In my zest to show I could, indeed, make soup, I scanned the recipe and noted items I still needed. It looked simple enough. Eleven ingredients. How hard could it be? Right? Um… I started to sweat. Houston we have a problem. The last “two ingredients” required recipes and preparation of their own (lots of scrolling going on here). Well, son of a Crocker…

Ok, I can do this. To the store for fennel seeds (?!?), molasses (who keeps that on hand?), and some other randomness.

Here’s the recipe.

Two hours, three pans and a now-to-be-spice-grinding-only coffee mill later, I was ready to start the soup part. That’s right. It took me that long to make the LAST TWO INGREDIENTS ON THE F*ING LIST!

Scraping the squash out of the roasting pan, though, I think I peeked at nirvana. I tasted the squash and — hold the phone! FANTASTIC. It was like candy. Could it have been the stick of butter? Perhaps it was the cup of sugar/brown sugar (substituted for the molasses which I managed to forget on the shopping list).

Anyway, put it all together in the mini-prep processor (time to upgrade to the Big Girl model) and whaa-la! Soup.

MRA witnessed it all in his wanderings in and around the house that afternoon. Curious, but not enough to intrude.

Side note: I needed to come up with some “thank you” gift to neighbors who took in our mail while we were in TX last week and the other neighbors who hauled in our farm cooler. Hm? How about soup? Poured it into two jars and bingo! Perfect gift. They may hate it, but the thought was good, the packaging nice.

MRA never got a drop.

Does that make me a bad wife?

Parent/Teacher Conference this morning. Yesterday’s post? Self-conscious parenting? It all came to razor-sharp focus sitting across the table from an expert.

The teacher asked if we had any questions or concerns right off the bat. I said something about wanting to make sure she’s progressing and listening…

“The first, yes. The second, well, no.” There you have it. The stage is now set for the rest of the conference.

Some choice quotes:

“She’s a dynamic child. At times dramatic.”

“Does she nap at home? At times we almost have to sit on her to get her to quiet down and be still.”

“She’s a bright child. Sometimes a little too bright for us.”

She and her best friend (this week), Grant, share a love for animals. In addition to playing with Grant’s toys which he brings from home, the two of them like to pretend to BE various animals.

“On the playground, that’s fine. Once we’re inside, however, I have to remind them that inside school, kids have to be kids and walk on two feet.”

Through all of this, I was hanging on to each shred of a compliment and planning my next discussion with Kate about doing-as-you’re-asked-the-FIRST-TIME.

Secretly, I think MRA was pleased. It seems his DNA is winning the battle.

I ran across an article on the New York Times site from Motherlode entitled “Parents in Glass White Houses.” While most of the article was about how difficult it must be for the Obamas to raise “normal” kids in the White House, with everyone watching, talking about and writing about them, the snippet below hit home.

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Even if you are not named Obama, strangers seem to have a lot to say about how children should be raised. I am struck almost daily here on Motherlode by how much of the conversation is passing judgment — critiquing someone else’s decision to breastfeed, or not, give birth in a hospital, or not, reward children for chores, or not. And those who are not weighing in on everyone else’s path are afraid that others are criticizing their own.

Since he was about 4, my younger son, Alex, has refused to wear a coat. Battles ensued. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. One day, in the middle of my quiet and rational explanation of why coats were necessary (O.K., O.K., maybe I was screaming) he raised himself up to his full 4-year-old height and announced, “I know when this body is cold.”

I stopped, and thought about it, and saw that what drove me was not a fear of hypothermia. He was walking 10 paces from the car into preschool and back out again. What I feared were the preschool teachers. And the other preschool Mommies. Who couldn’t help themselves.

“Alex, don’t you know its cold?” “Alex I get cold just looking at you.”

Only they weren’t looking at him, they were looking at me.

Alex has made it to age 14, without frostbite. He still hates wearing coats. And while I will be watching Sasha and Malia with fascination over the next four years I will, in Alex’s honor, try very hard to keep any quibbles to myself. Even if — especially if — they arrive at Sidwell Friends one January morning without their coats.
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I had the same coat argument with Kate one day, in the company of another parent and her two kids. While her kids ran around coat-less, I asked in wonder, “Won’t they get cold?”

“If they do, then they’ll finally come in and get a coat,” she replied.

There are battles out there to be fought with our children. It’s our job to pick the battles carefully, teach and guide our kids. But for me, sometimes the teaching and guiding is based on what I think should be done because of how I will be perceived or judged as a parent. I find myself sometimes looking to and trusting the “norms” of the parenting public instead of figuring out how I, Kate’s mom, should handle the situation.

Who are the experts? Are they the other parents at the library? The other parents walking through the halls at school? Every day is an adventure in parenting. New issues arise, new battle lines are drawn, and new limits are tested by my 3 year old. I’m often a self-conscious parent, wondering if I’m “doing it right.” At the same time, who defines “right” when it comes to my family?

I may not be a parenting expert, but I need to remember that, by the simple virtue of time spent on the job, I am an expert at parenting Kate.

When I was little, one of my favorite books was “Happiness is a Warm Puppy” by Charles Schulz.

This may be a stretch, but stay with me here…

Saturday morning, MRA had left for golf early, but not before waking everyone in the household. Delightful, really, considering we ALL had been up late the night before. But I digress. So, I’m snuggled back down under the covers, trying to find sleep again, and I hear Kate wander in. She climbs in bed with me, snuggles down next to me and flings an arm across my shoulders.

“Morning,” I say.

“Mommy, your breath is stinky but you’re warm. Like a peanut butter sandwich. ‘Cause, you know, sometimes when you toast it, the peanut butter gets warm…” she trails off, lost in her own thoughts.

Apparently, to Kate, Happiness is a Warm Peanut Butter Sandwich.